Apple today announced the release of Safari 5.0.1. What’s significant in this point release is that Apple has turned on support for the Extensions Gallery. When Safari 5 was released in June, it included support for extensions so that developers could start building them, but without access to the Extensions Gallery, users had no easy way to find and install those extensions.

The Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible from the Safari menu or via extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions from the gallery with a single click, with no need for a browser restart. Extensions can be automatically updated and are managed within Safari.

Safari Extensions are built with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards. Every Safari Extension is signed with a digital certificate from Apple to prevent tampering and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer. Safari Extensions work in a sandbox, so they can’t access information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer.

While the Safari Extension Gallery is launching with a range of extensions from the likes of Bing, the New York Times, Twitter and eBay, it’s nowhere near to matching the usefulness of Chrome’s extensions, let alone Firefox’s gigantic range of add-ons. Apple’s decision to include extension support in Safari is a smart one, but until developers start porting the most useful extensions to Safari, I’ll find it tough to switch from my favorite browsers.

You can download Safari 5.0.1 for both Mac and PC for free from Apple.

(Via GigaOM.)

If you’ve never heard of the NetTalk TK6000, you’re certainly not alone — suffice it to say it’s an as-seen-on-TV product that converts a standard ethernet internet connection into a VoIP telephone cord. And to be clear, the new NetTalk Duo doesn’t seem to offer anything different than its predecessor, only a shiny bullet case, but that just makes it the perfect salvo across incumbent MagicTalk’s bow. We can hardly wait to see how the latest chapter in the infinite long distance call saga will play out. However, on the off-chance you’ve been looking to Fire Your Phone Company(R), don’t wait, act now — peep the press release after the break for your ten percent discount.

(Via Engadget.)

Whether or not you agree with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that the age of privacy is over, you can likely agree on one thing – Facebook privacy settings are not easily deciphered.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve sufficiently protected what you share on Facebook, then ReclaimPrivacy.org has a bookmarklet to help you be as private as you’d like.

The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of Javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings in a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you’re currently sharing information via the controversial “Instant Personalization” that was unveiled last month at f8.

The site and bookmarklet are the creation of software engineer Matt Pizzimenti and is completely open-source and hosted on GitHub. According to the website, ReclaimPrivacy.org will “never see your Facebook data” and will “never share your personal information”. The scanner operates entirely on the client side in the user’s browser, it says.

To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmarklet
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.

You can also become a fan of Reclaim Privacy on Facebook. The site, which is hosted on Google’s App Engine, was down earlier today because it had used up all of its bandwidth, so Pizzimenti has added a donation box to help cover bandwidth costs.

(Via Read Write Web)

Everyone loves free applications. One of the greatest things about Macs is the wealth of extremely talented developers that are willing to share their amazing creations without asking for a single cent.

We’ve compiled an enormous list of 100 amazing free Mac applications that you can download and start using today. These apps span multiple categories and offer an incredibly diverse pool of functionality so there’s definitely something here for everyone.

Music & Video

Boxee – Boxee is the best way to enjoy entertainment from the Internet and computer on your TV. Watch shows, listen to Pandora, stream Netflix and more.

Handbrake – HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. (Translation: Rip DVDs to your Mac.)

Hulu Desktop – Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center remote controls or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons. For users without remotes, the application is keyboard and mouse-enabled.

MacTheRipper – MacTheRipper is a DVD ripper (extractor). It removes CSS encryption, Macrovision protection, sets the disc’s region to ‘0′ for region-free, and is capable of removing RCE region checking. It can also copy ARccOS copy-protected DVDs. This is to backup your legally-purchased DVDs onto your hard drive.

Miro – Download torrents and podcasts, play any video, and do it with style. It can play almost any video file and offers over 6,000 free internet TV shows and video podcasts. Miro has a simple, gorgeous interface designed for fullscreen HD video.

Since Miro downloads most videos, you can take your shows with you, even on an airplane. Quite simply, Miro is a better way to watch all the video you care about. Best of all, Miro is 100% free and open source, developed by a non-profit organization and volunteers around the world.

Miro Video Converter – A super simple way to convert almost any video to MP4, Ogg Theora, or a specific phone or iPod. Miro Video Converter has presets that will convert video to the correct sizes and formats for popular phones, iPods, and other media players. Just convert your video and copy it to your device.

Pandora Boy – Love Pandora.com, but tired of having to run it from a web browser? Ever wish you could control pandora without even being at your computer? Well then, look no further. PandoraBoy allows you to control your music with global hotkeys or your Apple Remote. Additionally, it supports Growl notifications so that you always know what your listening to.

SizzlingKeys – Have you ever wished you could control iTunes without leaving your current app? SizzlingKeys is an iTunes controller that lets you do just that – and more – in an intuitive and unobtrusive way.

Whether it’s to pause the player, adjust the volume, skip a track or rate a song, you can do all that and more with simple customizable keystrokes. That’s not all. You can even search your iTunes Library or Playlists with a simple keystroke, all without switching to iTunes!

VLC Media Player – VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player supporting most audio and video formats (H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, aac, …) from files, physical media (DVDs, VCD, Audio-CD), TV capture cards and many network streaming protocols.

It can also convert media files, transcode and act as a streaming server over unicast or multicast and IPv4 or IPv6. It doesn’t need any external codec, program or codec pack to work.

Productivity

Anxiety – Anxiety is a super-lightweight To-do list application for Mac OS X Leopard that synchronizes with iCal and Mail. Its aim is to provide a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice.

Backboard – I love my Mac and my Backpack Account. Both together gives me not only the possibility to write my notes and tasks down, but more important to write them down EASILY!

Evernote – Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your notable life using your computer, phone, and the web. Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.

Lumina – Lumina is focused to show you a simple way to track your time. The concept of Lumina is based on three columns: Projects: A project is a bundle of tasks, Tasks: A tasks is a bundle of durations, Durations: A duration is the smallest brick to calculate your total time.

Pluto – Pluto menubar is an easy-to-use tool for the management of your events, tasks, projects and notes in the most effective and productive way possible. Pluto menubar is seamlessly integrated with iCal on your Mac, on MobileMe and the iPhone. Pluto menubar is placed – of course – in the menubar and designed to always run in the background and can be accessed with one click or even better – with a global hotkey.

QuickNote – QuickNote is a combined notepad and clipboard manager, useful to quickly jot down ideas and todos, store quotes, code snippets or whatever.

QuickNote is easily accessible from the menu bar, or with keyboard shortcuts: one to pop up a new note, one to edit the clipboard and one to save the clipboard without any further ado.

Snippely – Snippely is a basic text and code organizational tool. Instead of storing bits of code, quick notes, and memos in text files all over your hard drive, this application will let you save and organize ‘snippets’ in one convenient location. A snippet is a collection of one or more pieces of code and notes. Snippets are stored in groups for organization and quick retrieval

Task Mate – The to-do list made simple again. Just click to add, remove or complete tasks. Your completed tasks are easily accessible. Export your tasks to other applications via TextEdit.

Think – Let’s limit our attention to one application—any application—at any time. Let’s make it easy to change focus when we have to. Let’s allow ourselves to bring other apps up quickly if we need them, but put them out of sight again just as quickly. Let’s rediscover how to focus, and get back to thinking.

File Sharing and Transfer

CloudApp – CloudApp allows you to share images, links, music, videos and files. Here is how it works: choose a file, drag it to the menubar and let us take care of the rest. We provide you with a short link automatically copied to your clipboard that you can use to share your upload with co-workers and friends. Additionally you can view, track and delete files right from your menubar.

CyberDuck – Cyberduck is a libre open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac. It features an easy to use interface with quickly accessible bookmarks. The outline view of the browser allows to browse large folder structures efficiently and you can quickly preview files with Quick Look.

To edit files, a seamless integration with any external editor application makes it easy to change content quickly. Both Amazon CloudFront and Cloud Files from Rackspace can be easily configured to distribute your content in the cloud. Many OS X core system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour and the Keychain are supported and 30 translations make you feel at home.

Dropbox – Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers. Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!) Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using the Dropbox website.

droplr – Droplr is the best way to share files from your Mac on the internet. Period. Whether you want to link to an image or embed one somewhere, Droplr makes sharing images on the web easy. Need to share a text note? Or how about a code snippet? We’ll even syntax highlight it for you.

Filezilla – FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface.

Jing – Snap a picture or take a video of your screen and share instantly over the web, IM, email.

Transmission – Transmission is a cross-platform BitTorrent client. Transmission is designed to balance power and usability. We’ve set the defaults to Just Work and it only takes a few clicks to configure advanced features like watch directories, bad peer blocklists, and the web interface. When Ubuntu chose Transmission as its default BitTorrent client, one of the most-cited reasons was its easy learning curve.

Application and File Launchers

aLaunch – It is an application launcher, and is operated via the status menu. You can chose to display icons at 16 pixels – 64 pixels. Files and folders can be registered with aLunch as well. Folders will be opened in the Finder. Different categories can be registered by using groups and separators.

Google Quick Search Box – Quick Search Box is an open source search box that allows you to search data on your computer and across the web. With Quick Search Box you can search for information from just about anywhere. You can then perform actions on the search results, such as launching applications, emailing friends, or playing a song.

Quicksilver – A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data. Quicksilver is an application launcher on steroids. Though no longer in development, it can still provide plenty of additional functionality to your system. Read our beginner’s guide here.

Image and Text Editing

Bean – Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge! MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people. But sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean’s niche.

Blender – Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. Discover the wide toolset available in Blender, defining a complete pipeline (from modeling to sequence editing) controlled by a flexible and consistent user interface.

DrawBerry – With DrawBerry, you have all the possibilities the vectorial drawing offers you in a free, easy to use and powerful application. If you don’t need applications such Illustrator or Inkscape and you want to create some simple (or less simple) illustrations, DrawBerry is for you.

Fraise – Fraise is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.6 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs – like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on

Fraise has all open documents in a list with beautiful Quick Look icons to your left just like e.g. iTunes so you can easily switch between many documents – you can also choose to display them as tabs if you prefer it that way.

GIMP – GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens’ barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface.

Google SketchUp – Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create 3D models of anything you like. Redecorate your living room. Design a new piece of furniture. Model your city for Google Earth. Create a skatepark for your hometown, then export an animation and share it on YouTube. There’s no limit to what you can create with SketchUp.

Inkscape – An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

OpenOffice – OpenOffice 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Picasa – Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!

Pixus – The AIR pixel ruler application. A handy tool for web and interface designers. Measure the screen objects in pixels using both mouse and keyboard control. Preview your design with skins and presets.

Seashore – Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing.

It is based around the GIMP’s technology and uses the same native file format. However, unlike the GIMP, Seashore only aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products. Seashore was created by Mark Pazolli who led the project until the end of 2009.

Scribus – Scribus is an Open Source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4/eComStation and Windows desktops with a combination of ‘press-ready’ output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, Spot Colors, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

TextWrangler – A general-purpose text editor for light-duty composition, data-file editing (where the data files consist of plain [unstyled] text), and manipulation of text-oriented data. TextWrangler supports working with both plain-text and Unicode files (with the exception of files written using right-to-left writing systems, such as Hebrew or Arabic). TextWrangler also features an integrated spelling checker, as well as integration with Word Services-aware spelling and grammar checkers.

Communication

Adium – Adium is a free and open source instant messaging application for Mac OS X, written using Mac OS X’s Cocoa API, released under the GNU GPL and developed by the Adium team. Based on the libpurple protocol library, Adium can connect you to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services (see further down for the list) and then chat with other people using those services.

Colloquy – Traditionally, chat clients on the Mac have been anything but glamorous. Colloquy is an advanced IRC, SILC & ICB client which aims to fill this void. By adhering to Mac OS X interface conventions, Colloquy has the look and feel of a quality Mac application.

Google Notifier – The Google Notifier is an application that shows you alerts in your menu bar, so you can see when you have new Gmail messages or upcoming Google Calendar events without having to open a web browser.

ooVoo – With ooVoo, you can connect with anyone, anytime, with video calls, video messages, phone calls, text and more. Use ooVoo to get face time with people you can’t meet in person (and save travel time and money!). ooVoo makes life easier and more fun.

Skype – Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Everyday, people also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles.

Thunderbird 3 – Thunderbird, as a messaging system, is uniquely positioned as the tool that users can use to integrate as many of their communications as they want. By combining an open architecture, a powerful extensibility and customization framework, and a person-centric perspective on communications, Thunderbird is a powerful yet enjoyable tool to help individuals manage their online interactions — whether that’s email, instant messaging, social networking messages, or other types of message.

System Utilities

AddressBookSync – AddressBookSync is a free Mac OS X application to download profile pictures and other Facebook data to Address Book cards. This is a handy tool to keep your contacts’ pictures updated if you have numerous Facebook friends in your Mac OS X Address Book.

AppCleaner – AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily. AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them. Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will find for the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.

AppFresh – AppFresh helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date. All from one place, easy to use and fully integrated into Mac OS X. AppFresh works by checking the excellent osx.iusethis.com for new versions and lets you download and install available updates easily.

Camouflage – Do you have way too many items on your desktop? Do you hate cleaning up that mess? Camouflage is the right utility for you. It hides all the icons and leaves nothing but the pure wallpaper.

ClipMenu – ClipMenu can manage clipboard history. You can record 8 clipboard types, from plain text to image. To paste a recorded item, you just pop up menu by invoking the shortcut key, and select a menu item from the menu. You can also register texts you frequently use, like e-mail addresses, user IDs and so on, as snippets. You can paste these snippets from the menu, too.

coconutBattery – coconutBattery isn’t just a tool which shows you only the current charge of your battery – it also shows you the current maximum capacity of it in relation to the original capacity your battery had as it left the factory. You also get information about the battery-loadcycles (how often did you fully load your battery), the current charger (coconutBattery even warns you if you plugged in a wrong charger for your Notebook) and last but not least information about the age of your Mac.

Burn – There are a lot of ways to approach burning discs. Burn keeps it simple, but still offers a lot of advanced options. Keep your files safe and share them. Burn your files to a disc so you can access them later on. Choose different filesystems so you can share your files with people with different operating systems. Change advanced settings like, file permissions, the disc icon, file dates and more on the fly in Burn’s inspector.

Caffeine – Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ⌘-click) the icon to show the menu.

Carbon Copy Cloner – Spinning for years at 75MPH, your hard drive’s catastrophic crash could really hinder your productivity. Use CCC to make a bootable backup of your digital life today!

DateLine – DateLine displays a linear calendar on your Mac desktop which provides easy access to iCal and your events. The appearance of the DateLine is endlessly customizable and themeable.

Desktop Curtain – Desktop Curtain displays your favorite desktop picture just in front of your real desktop, so you won’t have to clean up each time you need to take a screenshot. And it’s really easy to control — just control- or right-click on Desktop Curtain’s desktop picture to access its settings or quit.

Dock Dodger – Sometimes, you find an application that you really, really like, but when you run it, the icon takes up valuable space in your Dock. With Dock Dodger, you can rid almost any application of its Dock icon, giving you your Dock back. With Dock Doger, removing the Dock icon is as easy as Drag and Drop. Simply drag in the application you want to Un-Dock and Dock Dodger takes care of the rest. When you re-launch that application, it will be sans Dock icon. Want the Dock icon back? Just re-drag the application into Dock Dodger and everything’s back to normal.

DockSpaces – A tiny application that allows you to have up to 10 different docks and swap anytime you want from the menu bar.

FlyGesture – FlyGesture is activated like Exposé or Dashboard, bringing up a transparent window of ‘guides’ to move your mouse through. Moving your mouse through the guides lets FlyGesture know what action or actions you want to be performed, such as closing a window or opening an application. Not getting it? Here’s a movie that demonstrates creating and using a new gesture to open Safari.

GeekTool – GeekTool is a PrefPane (System Preferences module) for Mac OS 10.5. It let you display on your desktop different kind of informations, provided 3 default plugins: File plugin to monitor MacOS X activity with /var/log/system.log, or any file that you want to follow.Shell mode to launch custom scripts or commands like ‘df’ to check space left on filesystems, ‘uptime’ to monitor load of your machine… Finally, Image mode helps you monitor bandwith usage, CPU loads, memory availability of your server, via tools like MRTG or RRD.

Ghost – There are lots of files on your computer that you can’t see. Apple has conveniantly hidden many system files from you, so that your computer doesn’t look like an ugly, cluttered mess.However, they have not provided any easy way to create your own hidden files, or even to view theirs. Ghost provides a simple, user friendly way to do both of these things. Simply drag and drop a file or folder into the list, then uncheck (or check) its checkbox and the item will be instantly hidden or un-hidden.

Growl – Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications. Notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you’re already in.

Jumpcut – Jumpcut is an application that provides ‘clipboard buffering’ — that is, access to text that you’ve cut or copied, even if you’ve subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut’s interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard’s history.

Monolingual – Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. I don’t know about you, but I use my computer in only one (human) language — English. And I’m willing to bet that you do too, albeit perhaps not English. So why do you have a bunch of localization files for the Mac OS X operating system filling up your hard drive? Enter Monolingual — a handy utility for reclaiming your space for more useful things… like international mp3 files, email or whatever you like.

NameChanger – NameChanger Rename a list of files quickly and easily. See how the names will change as you type.

Name Mangler – The Finder is good at a lot of things, but renaming a lot of files is not one of them. Automator can help, but it can be a bit intimidating to use. Enter Name Mangler, which makes short work of all your file renaming tasks.

Paparazzi – Paparazzi! is a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages. It’s written in Objective-C using the Cocoa API and the WebKit framework. It was inspired by webkit2png, a commandline tool written by Paul Hammond in pyObjC.

SaveCircle – SaveCircle is a little tool that can save in chosen time the document of the frontmost application, so that you don’t have to worry about loosing some work. This is simple, transparent and efficient and work with every applications.

Shoo Apps – Shoo Apps allows per-application granularity in hiding inactive applications to keep your workspace uncluttered.

SnapNDrag – SnapNDrag lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging the resulting screenshot off. For example, to email a screenshot, you would drag the screenshot from SnapNDrag to the Mail application. It is that simple. No hard-to-remember key combinations, no file conversion to deal with, no file dialog boxes to navigate, no temporary files to erase later on.

Teleport – Teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs. Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your keyboard. The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs.

TinkerTool – TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system. The tool makes sure that preference changes can only affect the current user. The program will never change any component of the operating system, so the integrity of your system is not put at risk, and there will be no negative effect on system updates.

Todos – Sometimes you just don’t want to take time going to your Applications folder or searching around your hard drive. Just click a quick hotkey (Command-Option-Control-T) and Todos will simply appear. Todos’ job is simple. Todos doesn’t do more than it says. Like its definition in Spanish, Todos will show you everything. Todos shows you all your applications in a complete dock. All of us have a plethora of programs, and the Apple dock just can’t fit them all.

Wallpaper Clocks – Vladstudio and Softshape Development proudly introduce Wallpaper Clocks – desktop wallpaper which refreshes every minute to keep your time and date precise as well as stylish in many artistic ways!

YemuZip – Drag, drop, done. Making zip files cannot be any easier. YemuZip is an easy-to-use application for making zip files. Just drag, drop, name your zip file and you’re done. The Finder’s Archive function makes zip files that contains Mac-specific information that, when extracted on a PC, looks like garbage. YemuZip lets you choose between a PC-compatible format and a Mac format that preserve all the Mac-specific metadata.

Internet and Browsers

AllBookmarks – AllBookmarks adds a new item to your Mac OS X menu bar giving you quick access to all your bookmarks. All your Safari, Firefox and Flock bookmarks are shown and can be selected. AllBookmarks also gives you access to your 1Password 1Click bookmarks so you can navigate to a page, fill the form, and submit it, all with a single click!

Aptana Studio – Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with thousands of additional plugins created by the community.

Camino – Camino is an open source web browser developed with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users. Built from the ground up exclusively for Mac OS X, Camino is designed to make your browsing experience better. With features like annoyance blocking, tab overview, and phishing and malware detection, Camino keeps you browsing safer and faster on the Web.

Cruz – A web browser with innovative multi-pane browsing and an integrated Twitter feed. Read our review here.

DownloadMonitor – DownloadMonitor enables your computer to automatically react to specific conditions of your downloads.
You choose how, when, and which downloads the computer ought to react to.

Flock – The award winning social browser (Twitter, Facebook and blog integration). The people here at Flock are committed to building a browser unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before – because we start by focusing on user needs. We take pride in solving for common behaviors on the Web that seem clunky today, and will seem ridiculous tomorrow. We’re taking you there.

Fluid App – Web applications like Gmail, Facebook, Campfire and Pandora are becoming more and more like desktop applications every day. Running each of these web apps in an individual tab in your browser can be a real pain. Fluid lets you create a Site Specific Browser (SSB) out of any website or web application, effectively turning your favorite web apps into desktop apps.

Mocha – Mocha is a tool that monitors your network activity and keeps a record of Ip / Mac address pairings and firewall logs. It will give a warning when it notices any suspicious activity, like any changes in Mac address or any connection attempt to the firewall.

NetNewsWire – Looking for an easy-to-use RSS and Atom reader for your Mac? You’ve found it! The Eddy award-winning NetNewsWire has a familiar three-paned interface and can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs.

Newsfire – Simple to use and packed with features, NewsFire makes it a joy to keep atop the constant flow of information on the web. It’s easy to filter and organize your news with NewsFire’s smart groups. Build your own feeds with custom rules, or drag and drop to create groups of related content.

Opera – Surf the Web with lightning speed, using the fastest browser ever. Everything from how Web pages load to how you open tabs is optimized to happen almost instantly. You can even speed up browsing on slow connections, with Opera Turbo.

Quiet Read – Quiet Read is my new application that lets you save any link for later. Sometimes, when I am browsing the web, I want to store a link for later. There are note taking applications and everything-buckets to do that, but I wanted something light and simple. Simple as dragging a link onto a menu bar item to store it.

Shiira – Shiira is a web browser written in Cocoa. It uses the KHTML rendering engine provided by Apple’s Web Kit. Since this is the same rendering engine used by Safari, HTML content rendered by Shiira will look the same as in Apple’s own browser. All source code is publicly available under the BSD license. We hope that our code will help other developers just starting out on their own Web Kit projects.

Simple CSS – CTo help you work with CSS, we’ve created a free tool called Simple CSS, which runs on Mac OS X and Windows. Simple CSS allows you to easily create Cascading Style Sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface. With Simple CSS, you can manage multiple CSS projects and import your existing style sheets. Simple CSS supports CSS2.

SiteSucker for Mac OS X – SiteSucker is a Macintosh application that automatically downloads Web sites from the Internet. It does this by asynchronously copying the site’s Web pages, images, backgrounds, movies, and other files to your local hard drive. Just enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press return, and SiteSucker can download an entire Web site.

Sunrise – Sunrise is an open source web browser based on WebKit for Mac OS X. The main window of Sunrise has the browser, bookmarks, downloads, source codes and find bars. You do not need to look for the hidden panels because the one window has all of them.

Wyzo – Wyzo is an awesome new browser that optimizes your online media experience. It will accelerate your web downloads, let you download torrents with a single click, discover media in your browser and much more.

Xyle Scope – Using Xylescope it is easy to fine-tune CSS values. Simply select the desired element by clicking on the rendered page to bring up the whole cascade of rules applied to the selected element and its ancestors. Change any CSS value and hit return to see the resulting effect immediately regardless in which style sheet the altered style rule resides.

Misc

Bodega – Welcome to Bodega, the world’s most innovative way to discover and obtain the hottest and latest applications for your Mac. Bodega is like a storefront right on your Mac’s desktop, one that’s chock-full of software apps from Mac developers around the world. Just download and install the Bodega app, and you have access to an ever-growing catalog of software to meet your every computing need.

iPhoto Library Selector – Select your iPhoto library before launching!

MAMP – The abbreviation ‘MAMP’ stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X! MAMP installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your Mac OS X computer, be it PowerBook or iMac. Like similar packages from the Windows- and Linux-world, MAMP comes free of charge. MAMP is installed in the typical Mac fashion: very easily. MAMP will not compromise any existing Apache installation already running with your OS X. You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL without starting a script or having to change any configuration files!

Help Us Find More!

That should be enough apps to feed your need for apps for at least a week. Let us know which of the downloads above you found to be the most helpful.

Also, be sure to leave links to all your favorite free apps that aren’t listed above so we can all check them out.

(Via Mac.AppStorm.)

This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. If you want to ask a question, just write a comment below.

CaptiousNut asks:

I’ve been blogging for 5 years but have never really, until last week, looked into ‘professional strategies’ to increase my traffic. I am using Blogger, and it looks like no one else is using it.

Am I handicapping myself with it?

I have been saying that getting your own domain name is a must for a long time, but many people still ask that question, so let’s talk about it once again. More specifically, let’s list the three main reasons why having and hosting your own domain is important.

1. You don’t really own your Blogger blog.

If you read Blogger’s ToS, you’ll discover that you don’t really own the blog. You do own the content you’ll write there, but the domain and the platform are properties of Google. The first consequence of this if that if you violate any of the service policies your account might get suspended and you’ll lose your hard work.

The second consequence is that you won’t be able to sell your blog, should be become popular and profitable one day.

2. Having your own domain gives you credibility.

Since Blogger is a free platform, you’ll find all sorts of blogs there. Sure, there are some good ones, but the majority is low quality, and you’ll have a lot of spam blogs that are created just to manipulate search engines, too.

As a result most people get suspicious as soon as they see the .blogspot on your domain name. That is why having your own domain will give an immediate dose of credibility to your site.

3. Hosting your own domain gives you more flexibility.

When you host your own domain name you’ll have complete control regarding the software and the setup that will be used there. You’ll be able to use simple HTML pages, to load a CMS like WordPress, to add special scripts and so on.

As your blog grows you’ll find that this flexibility is vital, as it allows you to expand the scope of your site and generate more traffic and money.

Would you add any other reason as to why getting your own domain is vital?

(Via Daily Blog Tips.)

A Google Voice number, one that rings all your phones, makes good sense as the caller ID number for outgoing Skype calls. Google Voice blocked the verification SMS that Skype needed until recently, but Google’s flipped the switch and made it convenient.

John, a Lifehacker reader and fan of Google Voice and Skype, tipped us off to a tweet from a Google Voice team member that indicated the Google Voice/Caller ID setup now works. You’ll have to respond to the SMS sent to your Google Voice number, but once you do, people you call with Skype’s “Skype Out” service won’t see a random string of digits, but a number they can actually call you back on. More »

(Via Lifehacker.)

Non-U.S. users frequently encounter the annoyance of geo-blocked content when trying to access popular sites like Hulu, but every now and then we feel the burn in the States, too. Reader hengehog details how to access BBC’s iPlayer from outside the U.K.More »

(Via Lifehacker.)

Between Twitter, Facebook, and Googles new social networking tool, Buzz, its hard to turn a corner without running into another social network. But how do you know which networking tool fits you best? Were here—with big charts and all—to help.

Last week Google Buzz made us ask ourselves what we wanted out of social networking. To answer that question, we charted what we liked and disliked about setup, privacy, usability, and other aspects of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. Here’s the result.

This chart doesn’t cover everything about every network out there. MySpace is (seemingly) on the decline or, at best, re-purposing itself. LinkedIn is really a business contact pool, FourSquare a geo-location game, and other networks generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.

For the simple read, here’s the full chart of our Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook comparison. We color-coded each answer to give a context of where it stood, in comparison to what we know is possible and what a smart user would like to see. Red means that you can’t rely on this network for this feature. Yellow indicates that the network offers it or makes due, but could definitely be better. Green means something works, and can be considered a selling point.

Click on the chart for a bigger view, or right-click to download the full-resolution file.

There’s a lot of text there already to parse through, but it’s obviously segmented and specific to each function. Having dug into the settings of each network and debated it with my fellow editors, I’ll try to offer up a concise take on how I’d explain each network to someone completely new to any of them. I hope it might spur some thought about which network you’re using now, too, and why.

Facebook

Facebook‘s strongest feature, as it stands now, is that it’s relatively easy to figure out who your ‘friends’ are. You can pull them from your webmail address book, sure, but you have to check off those you want to be a friend with, and they have to reciprocate. After that, you start seeing their status updates, photos, and other activities on Facebook.com, right when you log in. Simple enough, right? Not exactly.

You cant, or at least shouldnt, create two separate Facebook accounts for personal friends and work contacts/co-workers/casual acquaintances, all of whom are likely to hit you up on Facebook sooner or later. So its up to the user to create groups of friends, set what those different friends can see. Also, your Facebook identity is tied to certain ‘networks’—an employer, a school, a location—that you have to remember to set controls for, too. Dig around and youll almost certainly find the very fine-grain controls you might need. But then, every few months, Facebook changes up their offerings, for better or worse, and it’s up to the user to notice and re-learn how to decide what’s private, to whom, and, in a much more worrisome way, what’s being made public and search-able on the web.

Facebook does have a pretty great iPhone app, and offers a good amount of access to third-party clients like Brizzly and TweetDeck. But they’re still limited in some ways meant to drive you to the web site, and their non-iPhone mobile apps and sites are tough to love.

Twitter

What’s easy to like about Twitter is the simplicity. You get an account, you see a suggested list of famous users that you can feel free to ignore, and then you’re asked to write 140 characters about something, anything. It will be made public, search-able, and able to be re-broadcast by other users, unless you’ve decided to lock your entire account and require your permission to view it. You can follow other people, block the occasional jerk from following you, reply to others’ posts, message other users privately (if you both follow each other), and, over time, you’ll learn about third-party apps and context tricks that make the service make more sense. I started using Twitter one day into my first SXSW, and I had it mostly figured within one or two over-eager days.

That simplicity, and reliance on third-party sites and apps for picture posting, link shortening, and the like can be confusing to newcomers that aren’t into digging around, for sure. And the speed and volume of the main stream can be overwhelming and off-putting. But Twitter has grown slowly into a network that adapts to users’ needs, whether by force or through user innovation. If you don’t like how noisy and fast your main feed is, creating a list of high-priority friends and thinkers will do the trick. As you figure out what you like and don’t like about Twitter, you’ll be able to find third-party apps and interfaces that cater to those interests. We’d love to see expanded features here or there (for discovering who’s following you, and perhaps hiding certain posts from all but a few close followers, for example), but Twitter is a pretty novel solution for those who like to share short updates with the web at large.

Buzz

Whatever we write about Buzz will be slightly inaccurate in a week’s time, most likely. Buzz is brand new, and already it announced an apology and upcoming ‘fixes.’ From what weve seen, though, it seems like it wants to be the solution that FriendFeed never was to tracking your friends and contacts multi-varied interests. Some friends change their IM status to say whats up, while others post on Flickr, Twitter, their own blog, and other places. Rather than making you head to each site, or make those friends become endless self-promoters, Buzz aims to connect you to everything your friends are doing from a place youre already familiar with—your Gmail and Google contacts.

And that, of course, is where the uproar started. Buzz showed up, suddenly, inside Gmail, and when asking users to sign up, assumed too much that they’d like to turn their email contacts into people they ‘follow,’ and maybe make that following status public. If Google could reassure Buzz users that what they did on the network was only among their followers they’ve individually approved, it would be more appealing. The service also needs a dedicated home, instead of being spread across mobile sites, Gmail, Google Maps, and elsewhere, and gain better controls for how much ‘buzz’ flies at you. But it’s promising, still, because it’s not a public-type Twitter, or a walled-off Facebook, but something else entirely.

Which Social Network Fits You Best?(survey software)

How would you revamp our chart of social network strengths and weaknesses? What did we get right, wrong, and miss entirely? We’re open to your ideas, suggestions, and links, in the comments.

(Via Lifehacker.)

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

Google may have finally figured out social media, even if there have been some major slip-ups in the way. The implications of that realization could dramatically change social media as a tool and as an industry.

On Tuesday, February 9th, Google launched Buzz for Gmail, a service for sharing thoughts, multimedia, and your social media feeds with your friends utilizing Gmail as the conduit. The result: over 160,000 Google Buzz posts and comments per hour.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Google didn’t launch a small addition to Gmail — no, it has dropped a nuclear bomb whose fallout will permanently alter the social media landscape. I could never have predicted that it would become so popular so fast when I first learned about it.

Why? Why has it grown so rapidly? Why has it riled up such strong emotions on both sides? Are the privacy issues going to permanently damage Google? And most of all, what does Google Buzz mean for Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the social media world?

I’m going to tackle all of these questions and more in this week’s in-depth column.

Google Buzz’s Skyrocketing Usage

Google has only released two numbers so far: there have been over 9 million posts and comments in about 56 hours, amounting to around 160,000 posts and comments per hour. That’s even more impressive if you consider the fact that most users didn’t get Buzz until Wednesday the 10th.

The other number: over 200 mobile check-ins per minute, nearly 300,000 mobile check-ins per day.

Those numbers are simply stellar.

Why Have Users Embraced Buzz?

It’s a question that has both simple and complex answers: why has Google Buzz taken off as a service (thus far) in ways that Orkut, Google Friend Connect, and Google’s other attempts at social media did not?

Let’s start with the most obvious one, and one I think was a brilliant move, despite the privacy issues: it’s wired directly into Gmail. With a flip of a switch, Buzz gained tens of millions of users. With the Buzz tab just directly under ‘Inbox,’ the service creating its own unread count, and Buzz emails flooding inboxes, how could people not try it out?

The embrace goes deeper than that, though. I asked the Mashable Buzz community the following:

‘Why do think Google Buzz has gained traction so quickly? What’s the #1 reason you find yourself using Buzz?’

Here are some of the responses we received that I believe really sum up Buzz’s popularity:

- Adrian Eden: Ease of use and simple interface

- Eyal Herlin – it just works for me. i like the zero effort setup and the making of connections easy

- Sheldon Steiger – #1? It’s embedded into Gmail. After that, it seems to be exposing me to people and subjects that were not readily visible in the other networks.

- Roy Ruhling – On a scale of 1-10 for ‘socialness’ of social networks Twitter is about a 3, Facebook is about a 4 and Buzz is about a 9. It honestly and truly connects people from all over the world instantaneously

- Daniel L – The main reason buzz is growing so quickly is because it is easily accessible to Gmail’s large and already established user base. Normally, Gmail is the one site i always have open because it has my calendar, my to do list, and my chat all in one window. Because of this, i always see when i have new Buzz, and i will tend to check it and respond. This is the #1 reason i use it — convenience.

Summary: Easy to use, accessible, convenient, closer social circle, moves in real-time, engaging…

Google’s got a monster on its hands.

Addressing the Privacy Issue

One of the obstacles to Google Buzz’s growth — and a major point of criticism — has been the privacy issue. Since it’s linked directly into Gmail, people can figure out your email address. Since it auto-followed your most emailed friends, people could figure out your email habits.

All of these issues are legitimate, but here’s the thing: Google is responding with lightning speed. Yesterday the search giant made some serious privacy tweaks, making auto-follow into auto-suggest and giving you the ability to completely kill Buzz if you so choose.

In a few months, few will remember these privacy snafus. Just as people have forgotten about the Facebook News Feed fiasco and other Facebook disasters, people will forgive and forget about Buzz’s initial privacy concerns.

In that sense, Google will get the best of both worlds: it has seeded Google Buzz with people and content via the auto-follow and automatic opt-in features, but it won’t feel the heat for privacy issues due to the recent changes to both. It may have been unintended, but it was savvy.

The Potential Impact on Twitter and Facebook

If Google Buzz is here to stay, what does that mean for the two kingpins of social media, Twitter and Facebook?

If you don’t think both companies haven’t had constant meetings over the potential impact of Buzz, then you are kidding yourselves. There’s no way both companies don’t have people analyzing scenarios and Google’s plan for its social media wunderkind.

To analyze the potential impact of Buzz on both services, lets look at the key questions for Twitter and Facebook, and some possible answers:

Q: Will Buzz Kill either Facebook or Twitter?
A: No. There’s probably nothing that could kill either service. The user bases are too large and passionate for that to happen.

Q: Could Buzz slow down the growth of Fb/Twitter?
A: Absolutely. Imagine that 15 million people are spending 15 more minutes in their Gmail inbox because of Buzz, whether that’s browsing what their friends are saying or creating their own posts. There are only 24 hours in a day, so that time has to be taken from somewhere.

Yes, part of that time is being taken away from tweeting and facebooking. Even if it just means one less status update per person per day, that adds up to millions of updates lost to Buzz.

The effect could be a lot worse. We just can’t know yet.

Q: Could Buzz become bigger than Twitter?
A: It already is:

While we can’t pinpoint an exact number, Twitter has probably around 18-25 million users worldwide. Heck, let’s say there are 30 million to be generous. Gmail has over 38 million uniques in the U.S., and that was back in September 2009. Worldwide, that number is simply larger.

Yes, there are far more tweets than comments/posts on Buzz right now, but beating those engagement numbers isn’t out of the question for Buzz.

Q: Could advertisers and brands switch some of their dollars and focus from Facebook and Twitter to Buzz?
A: With millions of people using Buzz, how could they not?

Buzz is already taking a chunk out of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media services. That’ll only grow as brands and advertisers better understand what they can do with Buzz and its millions of users. Buzz is equivalent to throwing a giant super magnet into a room filled with nails.

Predicting How Google Buzz Will Play Out

Not only can you expect Facebook and Twitter to respond with their own features and partnerships, but you can expect developers to shift their focus as well. Remember last year when there was a Twitter app gold rush? I do — as the service skyrocketed, countless developers embraced Twitter’s API and built amazing apps on top of it. Facebook had the same experience when its platform first launched.

Now it’s Google’s turn. Buzz is an open platform, meaning that developers will soon be able to create new apps for Buzz — everything from iPhone apps to analytical services will be built on top of it.

Now if Google wanted to really shake up the developer ecosystem, it could offer ad revenue share for Buzz apps and its own app store. Gmail advertising is already well developed, and if you haven’t noticed yet, Buzz already has Google ads being placed against it. Offering apps the ability to quickly and easily monetize within Google Buzz could really take away from development resources being placed towards Twitter, Facebook, and mobile platforms.

If Buzz can keep up the momentum, everyone from publishers (like ourselves) to developers to Fortune 500 companies will have to pay attention to the conversations happening on Buzz. If this thing can drive traffic or put a big brand on its toes because of a buzz that goes viral, then there’s no telling how far it will go. Oh, and Google’s only just begun with this thing — more killer features are in its immediate future.

The social media landscape has been permanently altered. To ignore Buzz would be a costly mistake, because Google has finally created the definition of a game-changer.

(Via Mashable!.)

WordPress is arguably the most popular and the best blogging platform out there. You might have installed WordPress on your site, but you might be scared to experiment with WordPress worrying that you could break your site and WordPress.

Experimenting is one of the best way to learn new things and if you break your site, you probably might not want your visitors to see the fault as it might leave a bad impression. So, it is necessary to have the ability to learn WordPress and try new themes, plugins and other items without putting it online where people can see.

So, the best solution is to install WordPress locally on your computer. It will save you quite a bit of time since you can just put your files inside your WordPress folder without having to upload it to FTP. You can do anything you want with WordPress without a worry which surrounds you when you put it online. The possibilities are endless. Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to install WordPress in localhost using XAMPP. I hope it will become a great use to you.

1. Go to the official XAMPP website. We are going to use XAMPP as it is one of the best Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. It is very easy to install and use.

2. Select your operating system and which format you want to download. You can either choose a zip or a exe format. I would recommend the .exe file. There are also portable version such as XAMPP lite, but using XAMPP is just fine for what we need. There are also add-ons available such as Tomcat, but it but they’re not necessary for our use, may be something you want to experiment with at a later date though!

3. Open the installation file and you will be presented with a window. In, the destination folder, choose your destination. ‘C:\’ is recommended. Click install to start the installation (Won’t take more than a minute or two!)

4. When the installation is almost done, an MS-DOS window opens, You might think you have to type a bunch of codes, but that’s not the case. This window just helps you set your preferences. The answers are just yes and no.

First question it will ask you is whether you should add a desktop shortcut. Type ‘y’ for yes and ‘n’ for no.

5. The second question it will ask you is whether you want to locate the XAMPP paths correctly. Type ‘y’ for yes. I would recommend saying yes because XAMPP usually locates the paths correctly for you, much easier!

6. The third and last question it will ask you is whether you want to make XAMPP portable or not. You can choose which ever one you want, but i would recommend saying no if you aren’t going to be making use of the portable functionality (We won’t be in this tutorial) because it makes it easy for us to see the path such as C:\ and easier in the browser.

7. After this is done, XAMPP starts configuring and you will see this appear in the window. Press Enter and XAMPP will have been correctly installed in your computer.

8. Go the the destination folder you gave (such as C:\) and look for ‘xampp-control’ and open it. Now that XAMPP installation is complete, it is time for us to start using it.

9. You should see this open up. This helps us specify which services we want to start.

10. Click start on ‘Apache’ and MySQL. They are services required for running WordPress. XAMPP uses port 80 as a default port, so if you have any issues, try making sure no other programs are using the port (Skype occasionally tries it). It will say ‘Running’ next to the modules if they are started. The others don’t need to be started.

11. To check if XAMPP is working, open your browser and type ‘http://localhost/’ and you should see this. Yes! we are good so far. Choose your language for the list.

12. After that, you should see a page saying that you have successfully installed XAMPP on your system. Hoora!

13. Now that we have successfully installed XAMPP, it is time to get WordPress. Go to wordpress.org and download WordPress. Extract the folder.

14. Now, the steps get critical. Make sure that you do these steps carefully or the installation of WordPress probably won’t work. Go back to XAMPP folder (C:\xampp) and go inside a folder called ‘htdocs’.

15. This is where we are going to put the WordPress folder. Copy the wordpress folder that you extracted and put it inside the ‘htdocs’ folder. Note: Make sure that when you copy the WordPress folder, not the folder above it such as ‘wordpress-2.9.1″

16. We need a database for WordPress so that we can install it in our computer. Go to your browser and go to localhost (http://localhost/) and click on phpMyAdmin and you should see a page like this.

17. We need to create a new database for WordPress. Look for the ‘MySQL localhost’ section and you should see some boxes, and on top it says ‘Create new database’. That is what we need.

18. On the box on the left, your will enter a database name. You can name it whatever you want. I will call it ‘wordpress_test’. Then, on the next box, your will see a list of options. Scroll to the end and select ‘utf8_unicode_ci’. We are going to use this option because it supports expansions and ligatures. Click Create.

19. You will be notified that the database ‘wordpress_test’ has been created.

20. Now, go inside xampp/htdocs/wordpress (for example C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress) . Then, we need to setup up wp-config. This is to configure wordpress to fit our database, username etc. Many people are familiar with this step.

22. Rename the ‘wp-config-sample.php’ to ‘wp-config.php’ so WordPress will recognize your config file (Depending on how you’ve set up Windows, the .php may or may not be displayed. If wp-config-sample doesn’t show it visibly, don’t add it on to the wp-config when you rename it). Open the file you have just renamed (wp-config) with your favorite text editor (e.g. Notepad, not Microsoft Word!).

23. Now you will need to change these parts of the wp-config.

24. So, inside the DB_NAME to the right you will see ‘putyourdbnamehere’. That is where we will put our database name. Delete the putyournamehere (without deleting the apostrophe) and put ‘wordpress_test’ (remember that is what we called our database in phpMyAdmin).

In the same way, put ‘root’ in the DB_USER part. Then on the next part (database password), leave it blank, since we haven’t set a root password for our MySQL.

We will also not change any part of the DB_HOST because localhost is what we want and it is already localhost. This is just a test site, so no other configuration is needed here. Now, we are done with the configuring. It will be easier to understand what I am saying by the illustration below.

25. Save and close the file (wp-config.php). Next, open your browser and go to ‘http://localhost/wordpress/’. Hooray! It worked. You will see this screen and once again, many people are pretty familiar with this process. Put your blog title and email and click ‘Install WordPress’

26. Success! You will be notified that WordPress has been installed. You will get your username and random password. Copy the password and click ‘Log in’.

27. You are now in the login page. The username is admin and paste the password. Don’t worry about memorizing the password as we will change it.

28. Success again! We are in the wordpress dashboard. The very first thing you might want to do is change the password. On the red bar, click on the ‘Yes, Take me to my profile page’.

29. Scroll down and change your password, then update profile.

30. Yes, now you are all set. When you go to http://localhost/wordpress. You should see your blog with the default theme Kubrik.

31. You are done. There are a few other things I would like to remind you. In the XAMPP Control Panel , Apache and MySQL have to be running. You don’t need FTP to change stuff in wordpress. Just go inside xampp\htdocs\wordpress and change everything there. For example, if you want to add themes, just go inside wordpress\wp-content\themes and put your themes there.

32. There you go. That wasn’t too hard. You can now master WordPress without worrying about breaking your website and you will also save some valuable time. Go celebrate!

Then, come back and you are free to experiment with WordPress any way you like. Try out new posts, themes, plugins and explore the wonderful world of WordPress.

If you have any problems or want to ask a question, feel free to comment below. I will try my best to answer your questions.

I would also appreciate it if you commented what you are going to use WordPress in localhost for. I hope you enjoyed this post!

(Via Pro Blog Design.)